Word: afghanistan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Only three months ago, the Pakistani border town of Teri Mangal bustled with a busy bazaar and a steady flow of Afghan mujahedin rebels on their way to or from the fighting in Afghanistan. Today Teri Mangal is deserted. On March 23, Soviet-built Afghan MiGs roared across the frontier, demolishing many of the shops that sold arms to the guerrillas and leveling the simple clapboard flophouses where they bedded down for the night. The raid claimed more than 80 lives...
Gorbachev hinted that Moscow might accede to a role for the long-deposed monarch in Afghanistan, where 115,000 Soviet troops have been fighting a war of attrition against mujahedin rebels for the past seven years. Dismissing charges that he would withdraw Soviet troops only if a Moscow-dominated government remained in power, Gorbachev invited the Afghans to seek new leadership "in their own country, among refugees and emigrants abroad, or maybe in . . . Italy." That was an apparent reference to Mohammed Zahir Shah, 72, who served as Afghanistan's monarch from 1933 until he was overthrown...
Since Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan in December 1979, an estimated 500,000 people have been killed in a war that has pitted Soviet and Afghan military units against anti-Communist mujahedin guerrillas. The Soviets say they want to get out, but five years of talks in Geneva have yielded no results. The bloody conflict has largely taken place away from public attention, but two reporters succeeded in visiting the two sides of the conflict for TIME. Robert Schultheis spent two weeks in the field with the mujahedin, and Ken Olsen last week toured the battle zone with Afghan government...
...MiGs arrived over Spina Bora, some 20 miles from Jalalabad, Afghanistan's fifth largest city, just before 7 a.m. Half a dozen jets flew out of the northwest, dropped parachute flares to deflect heat-seeking missiles, and then began their bombing runs. Mujahedin 12.7-mm and 14.5-mm heavy machine guns opened fire from the surrounding mountains, shooting in wide arcs across the sky. At the guerrilla base, Commander Khan Emir and about 20 of his men stood defiantly on an open knoll, firing at the jets with AK-47 assault rifles and RPG-7 grenade launchers. Other nearby guerrilla...
...conflict in Afghanistan is a war of a thousand skirmishes. The mujahedin from Spina Bora and neighboring bases have in recent weeks been attacking Soviet and Afghan government defensive positions around Jalalabad. The air base there has been virtually shut down because of the threat of Stingers fired from the surrounding hills. During April, five MiGs and several Mi-24 helicopter gunships were shot down in the Jalalabad area by the potent shoulder-fired missiles. Now the Soviets are counterattacking, sending waves of MiGs from the Bagram air base, outside Kabul...